Sansa, a sanserif family designed by Fred Smeijers, benefits from the liberties taken in recent sanserif design without overdoing them. Yet it is a design full of character and it has proven versatile across a wide range of design uses, from packaging design - to posters, from book typography - to forms. Originally designed by Smeijers for his own correspondence, the family has been released in 2002. Sansa Soft has been published in 2006. With this second update, Smeijers brings out two additional widths: Condensed and SemiCondensed, and a complete Pro character set.

Sansa Soft diplays a rounded treatment of sanserif edges - a phenomena that goes back to the 1830s, when the explosion of typographical sanserifs had begun. Usually applied upon sanserif or slab serif typefaces, this rather simple but effective cosmetic treatment has been with us ever since. This fate could not be denied to Sansa and, like most simple things, Sansa Soft works! The Sansa Soft family consists of five weights of roman and italic designs: Light, Normal, SemiBold, Bold, and Black. The family covers a range of three widths: Normal, SemiCondensed, and Condensed. The Condensed variant includes an additional UltraBlack style for display use. Sansa Soft character set comprises small caps; lining, oldstyle and small cap figures (each in tabular and proportional widths); fractions; comprehensive scientific superiors and inferiors, numerators and denominators; case sensitive punctuation sets; mathematical and monetary symbols (in tabular and proportional widths); arrows; standard and discretionary ligatures; and a complete range of accents for all Western, Central and East European languages based on the Latin script.

Noel Gallagher’s statement that reading fiction is a “fucking waste of time” and readers are “putting themselves a tiny little bit above the rest of us” – is a valuable contribution.

Cathy Nicol: Isle of Joy

Vince Smith met bandmates Jim Kelly and Nancy Gibbs at a Sex Pistols concert, where he tried to kiss Sid Vicious’ guitar and got a bloody nose. Together they formed Aftershock, and for a while they made a lot of noise, a bit of money and caused a sensation wherever they went.